When punk icon Iggy Pop took the stage at the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, the room fell into a hush. Few musicians could have delivered a more fitting tribute to The White Stripes — a duo who redefined rock’s raw spirit for a new century. But Pop didn’t just honor them; he turned the moment into poetry.
“The White Stripes weren’t just another band,” Pop began, his voice slow and deliberate. “They were a phenomenon.”
He recalled first seeing Jack and Meg White not on stage, but in a photograph — “two kids side by side, grinning like they’d just pulled off the greatest secret in rock.” The image, he said, was a revelation. “They looked innocent, but you could tell they were up to something dangerous… They were, to me, a 21st-century Adam and Eve — except instead of forbidden fruit, they bit into raw, electrified sound.”
Pop’s speech painted a vivid picture of Detroit’s Gold Dollar, the tiny, sweaty bar where The White Stripes forged their sound — a mix of garage grit, blues soul, and sheer audacity. “The critics didn’t get it,” Pop said, shaking his head. “Some called Meg a lousy drummer. Others said Jack needed guitar lessons. But the kids in the crowd? They got it instantly.”
He reserved special praise for Meg White, calling her “mystery in motion.”
“With a smile that could melt concrete and a backbeat that could shake souls, she was the silent force behind the storm,” he said. “She gave the music its heartbeat so Jack’s chaos could soar.”
Then, turning to Jack, Pop’s tone softened — part admiration, part awe.
“Jack White was a wild alchemist,” he said. “He screeched like an owl, twanged like a country ghost, and wrote lyrics that sounded like they’d been pulled from a dusty vinyl in heaven’s attic.”
As Pop described it, The White Stripes were more than musicians — they were visionaries who stripped rock back to its bones and rebuilt it with innocence and fury. “You could hear the ghosts of The Who, The Beatles, and old bluesmen in his riffs,” Pop said. “But The White Stripes weren’t copying the past. They were rewriting it.”
By the end of his speech, the crowd rose to their feet. It wasn’t just an induction — it was a love letter to a band that dared to be simple in an era of noise.
“Their music wasn’t born from rebellion,” Pop concluded. “It came from something purer — love, honesty, and a need to start fresh in a new century. The White Stripes didn’t just make noise. They made magic.”
As Jack White nodded silently from the front row, the applause swelled — a standing ovation not just for the band, but for what they represented: the spark of creation, the beauty of imperfection, and the eternal pulse of rock ‘n’ roll.
